Classroom Management

During each session, expect varying emotions among your students:

• Excitement when they get something, an ah-ha moment, high-fiving, everything is awesome
• Frustration when they're stuck or struggling with a partner.

And that's just the students! We mentors come with our own emotions - especially at the end of a long week or work day.

While varying emotions will happen, how do we create an environment that's conducive to learning? Sometimes their behavior can disrupt learning or engagement for other students.

Classroom Management Guidelines are to be used by mentors who are need help maintaining a smooth classroom during sessions. Below are some of the most common problems that have been reported as well as suggestions to cure the issues.

You may also want to review these common scenarios and consider how you would respond. This is a great activity to do together with your mentoring team.

How would you respond?

Staying on Task

1. Communicate Timeline/Schedule to the class

• "We will be working on this activity until 1:30, and then we will break for 15 minutes."
• This helps the kids focus on completing work before break

2. Ask questions about what the students are working on

• "What are you working on right now? How are you challenging yourself?"

3. Help design To Do list

• Sometimes kids get lost in a sea of tasks. It helps with they can visualize what still needs to be done.

Maintaining Engagement

1. Build in breaks

• Reward good behavior! Did the students focus well for the first hour? Give them 10-15 minutes to play a structured game . Teach them a new one, or let them teach you one!
• Like us, students can get brain drain after staring at the computer screen or working through a complex challenge for too long. Schedule a brain break or team-building game halfway through the session. If you notice brain drain in a student or several at other points in the session, take an unscheduled brain break .

2. Create small goals

• Break down their current task into smaller pieces so it doesn't feel as overwhelming

Students Not Working Well Together

1. Switching partners often

• Helps the kids get to know each other as well as provides opportunities for more challenges
• Ensures one student isn't just letting another student do all of his/her work

2. Mentors plan/strategize partners ahead of time

• All mentors should review the wiki pages for each session ahead and discuss how they will structure the session. Feel free to write out requirements or an agenda for the kids.

3. Challenge students to achieve certain goals

• For example, if one student is having trouble being a good navigator (wanting to take over the computer), challenge him/her to be a good listener for 10 minutes

Horsing Around

(especially in professional environments)

1. Lay down and follow through with expectations

• This could mean writing a contract with the students during the first session

3. All mentors should agree and enforce team expectations/rules

• In front of the students, the mentors should be a united front
• Discuss disagreements about enforcing rules before/after the students are in session

Read more about working well in mentoring teams .

Poster - Expectations Chart / Team Contract

1. Write a contract with the students on the first day of class

• This is optional
• Writing it with the students helps them feel more accountable, and allows them to call each other out when someone is breaking the rules

Learn more about creating a Team Contract with your students.

Range of Experience

(from lack of typing/computer skills to experienced coders)

1. Expedite repeated tasks

• Feel free to log in for the children to save time - it helps to have them already logged on before class starts
• Partner different skill levels together, in hopes of the stronger student helping teach the less experienced one

Extreme Situations

For students who ignoring the interventions above and creating an unsafe learning environment for students:

• De-escalate the situation with a firm, "No, this is no acceptable behavior."
• Separate students in the situation.
• Wait until emotions are cooled. Then, discuss what happened with the students involved.
• Bring in parents to resolve the conflict when you need an ally and when repeated warnings and interventions are ignored. Ask the parent to help you, use examples, and mention if the student's behavior is atypical of his/her personality.

Learn More

Click below to learn more strategies to creating an environment that's conducive to learning.

The Intervention Two Step

Classroom Management: Practical Strategies